This week a PhD candidate in linguistics from the University of Malaya wrote and asked me to explain how American English speakers apply syllable stress in compound words. This is an excellent question that comes up frequently. Here is my answer. The syllable stress patterns for compound words vary. Here are some of the common… Continue reading #75, Susan Ryan’s Tip: Syllable Stress in Compound Words
Tag: ELT Newsletter
#75, Article: ‘Survey research: How to develop a questionnaire for ESL/EFL research’ by David Ockert
Abstract Language researchers who wish to conduct research may want to create their own survey to collect the information that they want to write up and publish. This paper explains how to conduct research by reporting the author’s development, piloting, administration and analysis of a substantive scale survey for research purposes. A substantive scale uses… Continue reading #75, Article: ‘Survey research: How to develop a questionnaire for ESL/EFL research’ by David Ockert
#75, Video: Shaping the Way We Teach English: Module 05, Learner Feedback
One important distinction to make when giving learner feedback is that of formative vs. summative evaluation. Formative evaluation is a way of giving students feedback along the way. It is the answer to the questions, “How am I doing so far?” and “How can I improve?” Summative evaluation includes those kinds of evaluation that summarize… Continue reading #75, Video: Shaping the Way We Teach English: Module 05, Learner Feedback
#75, Word of the week: Generative grammar
A generative grammar is a set of rules that tries to include all examples of correct language and predict how these will be formed. Example The tree structure is important in the context-free generative grammar model. It describes phrases in terms of constituent grammatical parts. In the classroom Generative grammars are of limited use to… Continue reading #75, Word of the week: Generative grammar
#75, Research Paper: ‘A Pragmatic Approach to the Teaching of Grammar in Indian Context’ by Madhuri Gokhale
Dr. Madhuri Gokhale works as an Assistant Professor, Fergusson College with Pune, India. One of the essential aspects of the teaching of any language is the teaching of its grammar. Ur (1988) defines grammar as ‘the way a language manipulates and combines words in order to form longer units of meaning’ (p.4). There has been a lot… Continue reading #75, Research Paper: ‘A Pragmatic Approach to the Teaching of Grammar in Indian Context’ by Madhuri Gokhale
#75, Article: ‘Core activities for using the chart to integrate pronunciation’ by Adrian Underhill
“I often see the Sound Foundations chart (you can see it below) in classrooms, and teachers using it to bring pronunciation into the central arena of language work. But sometimes teachers say they have not been introduced to a basic method for using it and they end up treating it like an ordinary wall chart.… Continue reading #75, Article: ‘Core activities for using the chart to integrate pronunciation’ by Adrian Underhill
#74, Article: ‘Video recorders in the classroom’ by Jamie Keddie
“I have just become an uncle! My new nephew Tomás is three weeks old today. Mummy and daddy live in Barcelona but his maternal grandparents and great granddad live in Scotland. As you can probably imagine then, Tomás is currently getting used to the mobile phones, Flip camcorders and other video recording devices that are… Continue reading #74, Article: ‘Video recorders in the classroom’ by Jamie Keddie
#74, Word of the week: Word stress
Word stress indicates which syllables are stressed – or emphasised – in a word. Example ‘Photograph’ has word stress Ooo (stress on the first syllable), ‘photographer’ has word stress oOoo (stress on the second syllable). In the classroom There are many ways to indicate word stress visually, including the method above, putting a line above… Continue reading #74, Word of the week: Word stress
#74, Video: Shaping the Way We Teach English: Module 04, Pair and Group Work
The focus in this module is on Pair and Group Work. Pair and Group Work incorporates principles and themes from the Cooperative Learning and Collaborative Learning theoretical frameworks. We will look at some real classroom examples, using Stella Ting-Toomey’s “describe, interpret, evaluate” process to analyze what is happening with pair and group work in these… Continue reading #74, Video: Shaping the Way We Teach English: Module 04, Pair and Group Work
#74, Susan Ryan’s Tip: How to Use the Correct Syllable Stress Pattern
Stressing syllables correctly in spoken English is often an area of great difficulty for south Asian language speakers. Speakers of South Asian languages frequently place stress on the first syllable of a word. However, in spoken American and British English the stress or emphasis may fall on many different syllables.